Baghdad, Iraq ? After listening for hours to witness accounts of torture at the hands of his regime, Saddam Hussein asserted at his trial Wednesday that he too has been the victim of prison abuse – by his American captors.

“I was beaten all over my body, and the marks are there,” the former Iraqi dictator said, making a new bid to put the U.S. and its foreign policy on trial instead of his own alleged crimes. “We were beaten by the Americans and tortured.”

Saddam’s lengthy soliloquy came near the close of the nine-hour court session, which featured long stretches of dramatic and occasionally vivid witness testimony about retribution allegedly meted out after a 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam in the village of Dujail.

The proceedings were punctuated by testy exchanges and politically charged allegations. In the end, it seemed more like a noisy tribal summit, where squabbling Iraqis often take their differences to be resolved by a sheikh, than a cold delving into facts.

Prosecutors presented three witnesses who described what became of villagers arrested en masse in 1982. They told of molten plastic used to burn prisoners and of children separated from their parents for years at a time. They described being fed gruel and being forced to drink hot, dirty water.

Rather than seeking to refute the allegations, Saddam, his attorneys and seven co-defendants attempted to counter the charges with attacks on witnesses and the trial’s American backers. At one point, Saddam seemed to concede that people had been mistreated by his government, but in the next breath he redirected the focus to what he contended was his own suffering.

“Any harm done to these witnesses is wrong and whoever did it must be punished in accord with the law,” Saddam said of the alleged victims of Dujail. “All that happened in a Third World country, as America says, and 25 years ago. But what is happening now, now, now, now? Ask any of my colleagues if they were not beaten nor have signs of beating.”

Lead prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi, more outspoken and forceful in presenting his case than in previous sessions, raised his voice in indignation.

“I visited you and saw an air conditioner in each room and ordered televisions for you,” he told Saddam. “If you have complaints, I will investigate and bring to court anyone who mistreated you.”

During Wednesday’s proceedings, Barazan Ibrahim, Saddam’s half-brother and intelligence chief, heaped venomous insults on the first witness, 37-year-old Ali Hassan Mohammed al-Haidari. He derided a group of Dujail victims described by al-Haidari “as the corpses of seven dirty dogs.”

The judge intervened. “How can you speak so badly of people?”

“They were criminals,” Ibrahim replied. “If you were our comrade in 1982 you would have taken the same precautions.”

The judge and prosecutor warned Ibrahim to temper his rhetoric, and they cut off the sound for the delayed television broadcast. But Ibrahim was not deterred.

He blasted al-Haidari as a fraud and liar, saying that the sole of former Vice President Ramadan’s shoe “is more honorable than you and your tribe.”

Chief Judge Mohammed Rizgar Amin, al-Haidari and trial observers gasped in shock at the remark, which is a grave insult in Arabic. The court erupted in an uproar.

Amid the bedlam, Amin raised his voice. “This is not appropriate,” the judge called out. “This is not appropriate.”